Sadness in our household. My dear father-in-law passed away at 92. He was another one of those WW2 vets that are quickly leaving us. While he was not a fighter pilot or a gunner, he was one of those unsung heroes that did his part. He was a maintenance man in the 8th AF repairing B-17 engines. He met a Leicester lass and married her and took her off to middle Oklahoma, where he became a maintenance crew chief for T-38s at Vance AFB. He would often greet me when I was unbuckling from a flight. You can pretty well figure a guy is going to treat his girlfriend right when her father is your maintenance man! He did tell me once that he first started out in bomber gunnery school but at the school they asked for people to volunteer for flight mechanic school which he did. He said, IIRC, he and one other person in that gunnery class of 30 were the only ones to survive the war.

Sadness in our household. My dear father-in-law passed away at 92. He was another one of those WW2 vets that are quickly leaving us. While he was not a fighter pilot or a gunner, he was one of those unsung heroes that did his part. He was a maintenance man in the 8th AF repairing B-17 engines. He met a Leicester lass and married her and took her off to middle Oklahoma, where he became a maintenance crew chief for T-38s at Vance AFB. He would often greet me when I was unbuckling from a flight. You can pretty well figure a guy is going to treat his girlfriend right when her father is your maintenance man! He did tell me once that he first started out in bomber gunnery school but at the school they asked for people to volunteer for flight mechanic school which he did. He said, IIRC, he and one other person in that gunnery class of 30 were the only ones to survive the war.

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I'm sorry, buddy. I lost my father this year, as well. He was 89, and my best friend. My username is his Hellcat squadron.

my deepest sympathies to you and your family. those mechanics were the backbone of the air force. they would labor through the cold nights to get the planes preped and ready for the mission the next day. then they would sit anxiously and wait for her to return. the pilots had a of respect for armorers, mechanics and crew chiefs....